Resolution on Renewable Energy Resources in a Competitive Electricity Marketplace

WHEREAS, new mandates for taxes, fees, and charges are being proposed by federal lawmakers to subsidize renewable energy projects, including the imposition of “portfolio standards,” as states act to deregulate the electricity marketplace;

WHEREAS, all power generation technologies raise environmental or land management concerns, including renewable energy resources;

WHEREAS, renewable energy research and development programs have demonstrated the technical and commercial viability of renewable energy resources;

WHEREAS, technological advances continue to reduce the rate of air emissions from all fossil-fuel sources where vibrant market economies are allowed to exist;

WHEREAS, primary emissions standards that leave to the marketplace the choice of compliance technologies can address air quality standards more efficiently than “technology forcing” mandates;

WHEREAS, government subsidies to renewable technologies impose a competitive disadvantage on the most innovative developers of such technologies; now

THEREFORE LET IT BE RESOLVED, that {insert state} advises and strongly urges the United States Congress not to impose new taxes on American consumers of electricity to subsidize the development of renewable energy resources, nor mandate minimum market shares for such technologies in excess of the levels sustainable subject to real market forces and under conditions of real competition in generation resources; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that {insert state} urges the Congress as it moves to implement a competitive electricity market not to discourage the marketing of “green” power and “green” pricing such that willing buyers and sellers of renewable energy resources are free to negotiate the terms and conditions of such sales, and no technology or class of technologies is given an unfair competitive advantage; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that a coy of the resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the Speaker of the House, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and to every member of this state’s Congressional Delegation.